This show started off in spectacularly awful fashion, with a 30-minutes-too-long set from New Years Day. For an opener with 30 minutes to perform, they talked A LOT in between songs, especially to introduce their Pantera cover song. Oh, did I not yet mention that they covered 'Fucking Hostile'? It's not really worth mentioning, because it was quite possibly THE. WORST. COVER. I. HAVE. EVER. HEARD. I actually cringed when they played it and I think I may have even ran out of the room to save my eardrums from that horrid sound.

In This Moment is way too theatrical now, with too many costume changes (and they even have a quick-change tent in the middle of the stage!). There were too many random instrumental interludes to give Maria Brink the time to use the quick change. Their set felt like all of the songs were written specifically so they could do a certain theatrical here or there (or, well, everywhere, during the entire set really). Just write music like you did when you first hit in the late-2000's and stop trying to be like Madonna...

I actually never thought I would be writing these particular words for Halestorm, but they were the saving grace of this show. Despite having seen them a few times live, I have never really been a fan. I didn't think they were great, but they were good straight up rock-n-roll, which was just what was needed after the two bands that preceded them.

I was hired as one of two merchandise sellers for (A Fucked Up Evening With...) The Trailer Park Boys (TPB). It was an easy night, good sales, but TPB brought out every redneck this side of I-5! I recall one person asking for a shirt (that we didn't have) of a specific TPB character, and I had to ask which character he was. So much for doing any research beforehand.

I was told a few times that I should watch it. I actually tried to, and when I did, I think I made it halfway through... in hindsight, maybe checking out the very first episode from 2001 was not such a good idea, it was so terrible, poorly acted and produced, maybe I should have tried to watch a more recent episode... but really, I probably would not have made it all the way through that either! For the 2 minutes that I went in to watch the actual show, it was just some dumb skit from their TV show, and the whole crowd was just yelling stuff and heckling them.

This was the whole show... one guy named Francis constantly jumping around on stage, in front of a white screen that served no purpose, surrounded by his lights. I don't even remotely remember what he sang or performed, nor would I have known anyway. It was so so TERRIBLE. It must have been sold out too, because there was a Fillmore poster. How they swindled 1,100 people into paying for this is beyond me!

If you don't listen to either podcast, you will have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I looked at my photo of each show six or so months later and I still don't know what the hell was going on. The audiences of each were into it, that I do recall. Just to put this into perspective though, I have NEVER listened to ANY podcast of any topic or person... and I hopefully NEVER will!

Two 20-something white dudes trying to channel their inner Prince (or "Parliament Funkadelic") and as their bio states, "...shake, stir, and serve up a tasty brew of dance, funk, rock, and electronic music." This consisted of generic EDM drumbeats tracked under terrible singing and simple juvenile lyrics (honestly, don't look, but if you must... https://www.azlyrics.com/c/cherub.html).

On top of that, Dude #1 who primarily sang and 'played' guitar... can't play the guitar. At all. For nearly every guitar solo (yeah, they had solos), he used a talk box. This effect essentially vocalizes the guitar's output into a microphone. So although he was strumming notes on the strings to look like he was 'killing it', he basically sang the solos through the microphone. Dude #2 played bass, occasionally backup guitar, had a drum machine that he sometimes used when the background music wasn't tracked, and provided backup vocals using this weird Isaac Hayes voice effect. How they swindled 1,100 people into paying $22.50 + service fee is beyond me. Today's kids man... they are clueless!

I assumed this was another weird Les Claypool project, with Sean Lennon, but it was actually good enough that I look forward to checking out their upcoming new songs!

At Slim's, the opening band Galactic Empire and their Star Wars shtick got old and boring after five minutes, and at GAMH, the opening band Captured! By Robots was really cool. What else can I say that I haven't already written (January 17, 2017, #6 of my 2017 Top Ten -and- June 2016, #2 of my 2016 Top Ten) about Mac Sabbath? It was essentially the same awesome show as in the past two years but this time it was on Halloween!

http://SpinningPlatters.com/korn-follow-the-leader-20-years/

Make no mistake, the show was good. Seeing an arena level band up-close and intimately in a theater setting is worth the price of admission alone. However, for a show celebrating a multi-decade landmark of a specific album, it is again reasonable to expect to hear that album performed in its entirety. This mini-tour was pretty much advertised as such ("FTL20").

Instead, the setlist of this show was not unlike their amphitheater tour last summer, except that no new songs were played. The first seven songs and the final song of the encore were all from Follow the Leader, while the other half of the set was hits and songs that are standards of any other regular tour set.

Overall, this show was as good as any other KoRn show, but it just didn't completely live up to the expectations of being genuinely about the 20th anniversary of Follow the Leader.

Any Metallica show is worthy of being in the Top Ten, but especially this one, since it was a free corporate (Dreamforce) show, since I had to sneak in because I didn't have the right badge, since they used a really cool video wall production, and since I got added last minute to the load-out and got to be on their stage to help tear it all down!

Phil Demmel and Dave McClain's final show, after 16 and 23 years in Machine Head, respectively ... and they went out with a massive 3 hour 15 minute set!

This was a benefit for Sean Killian, the singer of Vio-Lence, who is battling liver cirrhosis. Lots of local thrash metal musicians (from Machine Head, Death Angel, Testament, Exodus, Forbidden, and more...) performed Vio-Lence songs together!

Big band in a small venue are always my favorite shows... and then the large production at the Amphitheatre!

I knew that this was not going to be their final Bay Area show of their current multi-year "Final" tour... they'll be back at least one more time, I have no doubt about it!

After just returning from touring Europe for 2.5 weeks, as well as after weeks of recording a new album, they were still in 'show mode' and it was easy to see, they simply were on fire and killed it each night!

I don't get the opportunity to tour very often. This one started off bad (and then weird for a couple days) -- in L.A., I had six hours to count 27 new boxes of merch and set up the merch stand and sell to a sold out crowd, which was also easily the largest of the tour... so yeah, the first day was long and kind of sucked.

Then it got a little weird because I had only been introduced to the singer once for a second, not to the drummer or anyone else ... so for the next couple of days, I thought 'Who is this weird guy on the bus?' and 'Is he the guitar player or the keyboard player?'

I knew the drummer was the drummer but I don't think I spoke with him until maybe a week later in Omaha when I ran into him at a Starbucks and tried to give him directions. Of course, by the end of the tour, I realized he is absolutely the nicest person you could ever share a tour bus with. As one of the two primary members of the band, and a very influential black metal drummer, he had absolutely no ego. The other main guy Satyr was nice too, but he definitely did have a bit of an ego. I recall one such conversation (one of maybe two the entire tour that I actually had with him) where he basically called Iron Maiden "crap" and his band as being superior. Would that be having more than a bit of an ego?!